In the art of making and commercially dispensing beverages, such as lemonade and other non-carbonated fruit-flavored beverages, the art has long provided commercial beverage dispensing machines that include upwardly opening tanks into which water and beverage concentrates are delivered (in predetermined proportions) to mix and establish the beverage to be dispensed.
The beverage supply tanks in such machines are provided with valve controlled beverage dispensing mechanisms to intermittently dispense serving portions of the beverage into drinking vessels, such as drinking glasses or paper cups.
Beverage dispensing machines of the class here concerned with and noted above commonly include refrigeration means to maintain the beverages in the tanks cool; liquid circulating means to prevent separation of the ingredients of the beverages within the tanks; and, beverage supply monitoring means with related controls that sense the level of the supply of beverage in the tanks and that operate to intermittently deliver metered volumes of water and beverage concentrates into the tanks to maintain substantially full and constant supplies of beverage therein.
In the art here concerned with, the manufacturers and suppliers of beverage concentrate provide liquid concentrates in the form of heavy syrups and provide dry powder type particulate concentrates. Due to the distinct physical characteristics of liquid and particulate beverage concentrates, the art provides two distinct classes of beverage dispensing machines; that is, the art provides one class of machine specially designed and constructed to handle and use liquid concentrates and another or second class of machine that is specially designed and constructed to handle and use particulate concentrates. My present invention is particularly concerned with the last or second noted class of machine.
Beverage dispensing machines for handling and using particulate concentrate are characterized by the provision or inclusion of particulate concentrate storing and dispensing hopper structures. The hopper structures are positioned above the beverage supply tanks of their related machines. The hopper structures in such machines receive and hold supplies of particulate concentrate and are operated to intermittently dispense metered volumes of the concentrates into the tanks with which they are related. The concentrates delivered into the tanks combine with and dissolve in metered volumes of water delivered into the tanks by means of suitable water supply means that are included within the machines and to thereby establish and maintain desired supplies of beverages in the tanks.
To the best of my knowledge and belief, the most effective and serviceable form of hopper structure for such machines is an elongate, upwardly opening trough-like container or receptacle with upwardly and outwardly divergent side walls, substantially vertical front and rear end walls, a central longitudinally extending upwardly disposed concave bottom wall and a material dispensing opening at or close to the junction of the front and bottom walls. That form of hopper receptacle next includes an elongate Archimedes screw-type auger that extends longitudinally of the bottom wall. The auger is intermittently rotated by means of an electric drive motor unit and functions to move or transport the particulate material in the receptacle longitudinally forward to and thence through and from the discharge opening, as circumstances require.
While the above noted old and basic form of hopper structure is generally effective to move and dispense fresh and dry supplies of particulate beverage concentrate, it often fails to effectively move and dispense such concentrates that have absorbed sufficient moisture and/or have been warmed sufficiently to make the particles of the material tacky or sticky.
Particulate beverage concentrates of the nature here concerned with are normally heavily ladened with sugar, and are highly hydroscopic in nature. As a result of the foregoing, when such particulate beverage concentrates are stored in the hopper structures of beverage dispensing machines, they ordinarily absorb moisture at an undesirably rapid rate and soon become so tacky that adjacent particles of the materials stick together to establish a substantially non-fluid mass of material. When the materials become stuck together in the manner noted above, they fail to feed properly into engagement with the augers provided to transport them and the augers are incapable of transporting the materials as required. When the foregoing occurs, it is necessary and common practice for those who operate beverage dispensing machines to repeatedly open the machines or otherwise gain access to the hopper structures and, with a spoon or other hand tool, dig, push, stir and otherwise manually move the concentrates about, within the hoppers, to free the particles and thereby cause the materials to flow as required.
As a result of the above-noted tendency for particulate beverage concentrates to become tacky and non-fluid, the use of that form of beverage concentrates and the use of those beverage dispensing machines constructed to handle and use them have met with considerable resistance, in spite of the fact that the manufacturers and distributors of beverage concentrates, for a number of important and practical reasons, prefer to make and distribute dry powder-type particulate concentrates.
In the art of material handling and transporting, it has long been common practice to prevent particulate materials from bridging, compacting and otherwise "hanging up" in structures provided to contain them by vibrating or striking the containing structures to cause the materials to release from the surfaces thereof and/or to mix, stir or otherwise move the materials about within their containing structures to maintain them in a fluid state. Those means that have been used to attain the above-noted ends are well-known to those familiar with the art of material handling and include, for example, power-driven transducers and/or vibrators related to the containing structures to cause them to vibrate; power-driven hammer mechanisms and the like that strike the containing structures; power-driven material mixing rods, paddles and like mechanisms that work within the materials to maintain them fluid; and, various combinations of the above.
In practice, the various means or mechanisms that might be employed to maintain particulate materials fluid or that might induce such materials to flow when desired within related containing structures is often dictated by a multiplicity of special factors ranging from the size, shape and disposition of the containing structures to the specific physical characteristics of the materials being handled and worked upon. In addition to the foregoing, the nature of the means utilized to transport the materials and numerous environmental factors, such as the humidity and temperature of the environments in which the structures are used, are important factors which must be appropriately dealt with. As a result of the above, the effective operating parameters of the great majority of such means or mechanisms is often extremely narrow. While they are or might be effective in the specific environments of which they are specifically designed and constructed to work in, they are often times of little or no utility in substantially all other operating environments.
In the case of particulate beverage concentrates stored in and dispensed from trough-like receptacles with auger-type material transporting means, as provided in commercial beverage dispensing machines, a unique combination of operating conditions and environmental factors are encountered. Those conditions and/or factors have been found to render ordinary transducers, vibrators, hammering devices, and material mixing and/or stirring mechanisms such as might be effective to cause different materials to flow in a particular and desired manner in different material containing and transporting structures are of no particular value to cause particulate beverage concentrates to flow effectively within the above-noted form or class of beverage concentrate storing and dispensing hopper structures provided for beverage dispensing machines.